The Heroic Villainess
by SpritelyGryffindor
Summary: I'll be the leader; I'll be the best in class, better than everyone.  I'll have a team of cowards and self serving children.  I'll train them well; train them to protect themselves…even if it means abandoning me.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One

A preteen girl sat in a class room, chewing on a stick of gum that was as pink as her hair and eyes. Surprisingly however, her odd coloring helped her blend in rather than stand out.

In a room full of kids with odd hair and eye colors, people with claws, scaly skin, wings, and some traits that made one wonder if there was any human in them at all (and perhaps there wasn't), the girl fit in perfectly.

Right now the multi-species class was jabbering idly, waiting for their teacher to arrive.

"Yeah right, there's no way" scoffed a voice from nearby.

The girl looked to her left and saw her classmate Gizmo, bickering with another student called Blaze.

"It's true!" said Gizmo angrily.

"Stealing a car? At the age of _three_? Come on, I wasn't born yesterday" said Blaze rolling his eyes.

At this statement Gizmo looked genuinely upset. He hated people underestimating his abilities. The girl looked at the boy and—upon feeling a twinge of pity for the often bullied child—decided to help him out. She spit out her gum and stuck it to the bottom of the desk before speaking.

"Blaze, the kid's freaking eight years old and he can build super computers, I don't think his story's all that out there" said the girl in a bored voice.

"Who asked you, Jinx?" Blaze snapped, hissing her name like a curse.

The pink haired girl rolled her eyes and shook her head.

Annoyed by the dismissal, Blaze pressed on. "You're pretty freaking dumb if you believe that he stole a car when he was three."

"You're just jealous, because the biggest thing you ever stole before Blood found you was a piece of candy. I heard that you even got arrested. What kind of loser gets arrested over a lollipop?" Jinx jeered.

"Oh shut up! It was my first theft!" snarled Blaze.

Jinx smirked.

"Okay fine, Miss Annoying, what was your first theft" he demanded.

Jinx thought about it, and it came to her. Suddenly, realistically, as though it were actually happening.

_The young girl stumbled backward. Her brown hair was slightly charred and her pale skin was spattered with flecks of blood. Sick with fear, she reached behind her for something, anything, to hold on to—to brace herself on. Her surroundings failed her, and she fell to the floor. _

Jinx inhaled quietly, barely aware of the two boys waiting for an answer, she tried not to panic.

_She saw the figure step closer and scrambled back as quickly as she could, brushing a gun shell with one hand and a puddle of blood with the other. The horrified girl kept forcing herself away until she hit a wall. With no where left to go, she sat there, shaking violently. _

_A white haired man approached her, his orange, slit pupil eyes shining in the darkness as they observed the ten year old. He walked up to the bodies of the police officers. The child watched in horror as he stepped on her would-be-protectors, grinding their bodies into the dirt with his foot. _

_He looked at her as he did this and said…_

Jinx knew what this was; it was a side effect of brother blood influencing her mind. She tried to calm herself down. Tried to remind herself that it was just a memory.

"_You thought they could protect you?" He was clearly amused._

_He came closer, step by step, until he was right in front of her._

It was hard enough to suppress the terrifying memories when she was unhindered by Blood's influence, but it had been only hours ago that he had broken into her mind, trying to implant feelings of loyalty to the Hive there. By attacking her mental defenses her thoughts and memories became harder to control. Near perfect images from her very accurate memory flooded her brain and her senses went haywire.

Was she really smelling pencil shavings and Blaze's deodorant, or was she smelling blood and burning flesh?

Was she seeing a classroom at Hive academy or was she seeing the apartment that was supposed to have been her safe-house?

Was she really hearing the boys arguing as they gave up on hearing her respond or was she hearing the movements of the white haired man that was present in her every nightmare?

_The girl's heart pounded painfully as he crouched down in front of her and leaned in so close, she could feel him breathing. _

_"Such a foolish child you were, choosing to trust your worthless mother over me. Thinking you could hide from me." His tone was still light, but a dark look came over his face._

"_But I am a kind man," he said, licking some of the officer's blood off of his wrist "so I'll give you one last chance; Come with me."_

_The girl sat frozen, her every instinct was screaming at her to get away._

Jinx clenched her hands into fists and forced the images away, trying to anchor herself in the present. It worked to some extent, she knew where she was again her senses were under control, but she was detached from it all, held back from the present by the memory that was playing in the back of her mind. She couldn't tune it out. She could only watch.

_"Don't be foolish child" the man whispered. His breath on her face began to grow hot and smoke began to curl from his lips._

_Something inside the girl rose up, an instinct to take action, to survive. It charged her entire being until her hands, pressed behind her back, glowed pink._

_The man didn't notice the light; he himself was more intent on moving his clawed hand towards her face._

_Suddenly, the very floor underneath them was destroyed in a deafening explosion. A gas pipe had exploded, and small fires now littered the child's surroundings._

_The girl managed to cling to a floor board and stay where she was, but the man, the demon, wasn't as lucky. He fell into the room below and was covered in the flaming wreckage. But the girl knew instinctively that that wouldn't hold him for long. _

_The girl edged her way around the gaping hole in the floor and onto even ground. _

_She looked towards the door only to find that the floor in front of it was gone._

_Thoughts slammed into her head and she frantically tried to sort them out._

'_I'm trapped! I don't want to die! What do I do? What—Window! Window! Which one has a fire escape?' She was running, running, running, window, to window, to window. _

'_Not this one,' she thought frantically. 'Not this one, where is it? There it is! Window…I can't open it! I can't! It's stuck, it's too heavy! Oh help! Someone! He's coming, I know it! He's coming! Oh no! Wait. Hex it, hex it now!' she screamed in her head._

_She held up her hand and summed up as much energy as she could before blasting the window. Glass exploded, wood went flying, and she was out and sprinting down the stairs before the window had even finished breaking. _

'_Go, go, go, run! RUN!' She silently urged her legs onwards, the momentum from descending the stairs rocketed her out of the alley way and into the street. _

_'Car!' She shrieked to herself as the sound of a horn cut through the cool evening air. She dodged through traffic and reached the side walk. One more miracle she had been granted, but she knew she needed many more to survive. _

'_Through the alley, go, go, go!' Tears trailed behind her as she flew across the cement, her hair flying, her expression wild as she sprinted away, crazed with fear, her thoughts only on one thing._

'_Get away, don't stop, he'll find you. He'll know, and you'll die. Run, Run, Run!' _

_She raced across streets, through alleyways, down blocks, past buildings, houses, churches, across more streets. She only stopped when her body forced her to. _

_She sucked in air fearfully, knowing that she couldn't afford to slowdown. She had to keep moving, and she had to move fast. Walking at a quick pace and drawing in deep breaths, she looked around for something, anything that could help her in her situation. That's when she saw the bike. It was propped up on a rack. It was a bit big for her, but she knew that it might just save her. Moving quickly she hexed the lock and took it. She was just mounting it when a boy came running down the street. _

"_Hey! That's mine!" He was yelling._

"_I'm sorry!" The girl shrieked hysterically, and she peddled away frantically before he could catch up. She didn't look back, but his upset, pleading tones followed her around the block. _

_She tore aimlessly through the town, completely lost, but too frightened to really care about anything except getting as far away from the man as possible. She eventually found a train station. Hexing the ticket machine was easy, and getting on the train was easier. Dazed, the girl found an empty corner of the train, collapsed into a seat, and slept away two hundred miles, until the very last stop was reached. _

Jinx was back in the present again, the lesson had started. She cursed inwardly as she frantically tried to figure out what the class was doing.

It was strange, only moments before she had been frozen with the well remembered terror that had been the end of her childhood, but now she was just anxious to complete the assignment and please the teacher. She knew that these feelings were Brother Blood's doing. She knew that this was the result of the mental suggestion that he had implanted in her earlier, but the change in emotions was pleasant to her, even if it was forced. It hurt so much less to be a carefree lackey of the Hive.

It felt so much better to forget that this wasn't her, that she hated hanging out with people who would jump at the chance to stab her in the back. He made it to where she could forget that she hated it here. Brother Blood even came close to making her forget that she was trapped. That she had been trapped ever since she had unwittingly taken up residence on the streets of a city that was part of his territory. Ever since she had let him come near enough that he could enter her mind and help her dismiss her conscious when it begged her not to follow him.

Of course he didn't know how guilty she felt, even now: when she steals, lies, cheats, and hurts. What he does know is that he's got her hooked, with or without mind control. Blood doesn't know why, but she does. She knows that if _he _ever comes back that he will kill everyone close to her. That's where backstabbing friends come in handy. She knows that if _he_ came after her then they would abandon her, and that's exactly what she wanted. And if they did decide to stick up for her and got hurt in the process—

_It won't come to that. _Jinx thought firmly._ I'll be the leader; I'll be the best in class, better than everyone. I'll have a team of cowards and self serving children. I'll train them well; train them to protect themselves…even if it means abandoning me. _


	2. Chapter 2

A blast of flame passed so close to Jinx that, for a split second, she was sure her sleeve had caught fire. Her breath froze in her throat as she remembered the monster that had attacked her a couple years ago…

That was when she remembered something that one of the Hive professors had told them.

_There is no room for fear in battle!_

So Jinx quickly glared at Blaze and vented her emotions through an aggressive shout.

"Hey! Watch it, Moron!" Jinx shrieked angrily, purposefully ignoring the fact that this outburst would lose her points for this round.

They were in combat class once again and she had been assigned to work with Angel and Blaze. They were a bad match, even in theory, given the fact that they were all mainly long range fighters going into a short range fight.

Jinx expected that they'd done it on purpose however, to see how they improvised when out of their element. She for one intended to give them a heck of a show.

During the few times she had observed him in combat, Jinx noticed that Blaze had a tendency to back up several steps while using his powers, and if he used them suddenly, he tended to stumble backwards a little.

_So if he steps backwards a few feet for every blast of his powers to absorb the kick back, all I have to do is be in the right place at the right time…_ thought Jinx.

Her opportunity came sooner than she had expected. A group of armed robots charged at Blaze and Jinx ran over, giving every appearance of trying to help him. She carefully positioned herself behind him and slightly to the left, looking as though she were fending off the robots to his side.

She saw him raise his arms out of the corner of her peripheral vision and did a quick back hand spring to 'evade' some blasts. She readied a hex while she was in the air so it would be ready to fire when she landed. It worked out better than she could have hoped; though upon reviewing her choices later, she wasn't sure that that was a good thing.

Blaze, who hadn't registered Jinx's sudden change in position, let off a heavy blast of flames that sent him stumbling backward. He ran right into Jinx, who was slightly off balance due to the fact that she had just landed behind him.

She fell right over and Blaze went down a second later as he tripped over the preteen's sprawled body. His blast of flame rocketed through the air, completely out of control.

At that precise moment Jinx's magic was released from her hand by the shock of the fall.

Angel, who was flying above the pair, quickly dodged the burst of flame…by flying right into the path of Jinx's magic.

By the time she spotted the flash of pink coming at her, it was too late: she was blasted back by the force of the spell. Her right wing compensated perfectly for the sudden jolt, but it was her left wing that did her in. It caught the air at just the wrong angle and was wrenched outward with so much force that Angel screamed in pain.

Jinx, who was still on the ground from her fall, looked up at the sound of the cry.

She saw Angel, spiraling downward like a broken helicopter. Jinx's eyes barely had time to widen in horror before they flinched in pain.

The robots had caught up to them, and they were blasting them with low voltage taser beams. It wasn't enough to kill, or even knock them unconscious…usually, but it hurt enough to get the point across that they'd been hit. Jinx felt a pain in her arm followed by a pain in her chest, head, stomach shoulder, until—

"Enough!" shouted a cold male voice.

The robots immediately ceased firing as Professor Black stepped out of the shadows.

"Pathetic" he spat angrily. His eyes flicked over Angel as she clutched at her wing, Blaze as he shook slightly from the pain of the blasts, and Jinx as she panted on the floor.

"I would expect this sort of performance from first semester recruits, but you all have been trained in combat for a year, and each of you have been working combat scenarios with your classmates for at least a whole quarter!"

He glared at them and continued harshly.

"We've got three more months until you join the upper classmen, _three more months_ until Brother Blood himself starts overseeing your classes and He. Will. Not. _Tolerate._ Your. _Pathetic._ Mistakes."

Despite the fact that she did not care much for Brother Blood _or_ the professor before her, Jinx couldn't help but cringe under his venomous gaze and blush in shame at his cold tone.

"You three are an embarrassment" the man continued. "For your assignment tonight I want you _all_ to hack into the mainframe of the practice database and watch the footage from your combat session today. I want a report from each of you describing what you could have done better during the exercise, due tomorrow."

The man snorted in disgust.

"Since your team is not the only one that has failed today's simulation, each team will remain the same for tomorrow's lesson and will perform their mission again. If you fail me again, you will be…_disciplined._ Do you understand me?"

Jinx suppressed a shudder as she remembered the last time that she was punished and said a quiet "Yes, Sir" with the rest of her team.

Jinx headed back to her dorm, fiddling absentmindedly with one the two pink braids that held her hair away from her face. Her black military style boots moved against the floor quietly as she looked down the hall, thinking hard. That's when her mind flashed into the past suddenly.

"_Do your best, sweetie."_

_It was her mom, in disguise. She had bewitched her normally fire engine red hair to look like it was a shade of brown, a few shades darker than the color brown she had chosen for Jinx's disguise. Only she wasn't called Jinx, not then. _

_The pretty woman stroked her daughter's tightly bound hair lovingly and gave her a gentle push towards the area where all the kids were supposed to meet. It was time for them to get their makeup done for the play. _

_Jinx started towards them, her fairy costume swishing around her as she walked. She paused and looked hesitantly back at her mother. _

"_You'll be great sweetie, break a leg!"_

_The little girl smiled. She would do anything to make her mom proud._

She would do anything to make brother blood proud too. He was like her mom was he not? Kind and protective and…

Jinx shook her head to clear it and kept walking to her dorm. Blood must've sent out one of his motivational mental broadcast after hearing about the day's horrible practice.

Jinx opened the door to her dorm after going through numerous security pass codes, wondering.

_No one else has flashbacks like these that I know of…they don't even seem to notice when Blood enters their minds. Maybe it's because I'm magical? My mom did train me to deflect mind readers; maybe that's why I can fight him off even though he controls minds rather than reading them most of the time…_

Jinx kicked off her heavy shoes, revealing the ankle braces that were strapped to her feet over her purple socks. The braces were thin, designed especially for her and completely invisible, in the right kind of shoe. She took them of and stretched her ankles carefully, then she did a few of the exercises that she used daily to strengthen them.

She didn't need to worry about being interrupted. The nice part of being in a school full of villains was that they didn't trust you to room with others without blowing something up or maiming someone.

There was a knock on the door._ So much for peace and quiet._ Jinx thought as she hastily shoved her braces under the bed and answered it.

Gizmo stood there, looking shyly down at the floor.

"You, uh, left your plasma ray blueprints in the mechanics room today" he said, holding the out to her.

"Thanks" said Jinx in slight surprise, taking them.

"Maybe next time, they'll put us on the same team in combat. I think we'd make a good team."

He looked down at the floor blushing.

"Uh, yea…" said Jinx awkwardly. _Am I seriously being hit on by a nine year old right now?_

"Thanks for the notes" she said faking a smile.

"No problem! Do you uh, want to go eat dinner with me in the cafeteria?" he asked.

"Aw, I wish I could, but I have a lot of studying to do for tomorrow" Jinx replied.

"I could help you if you want" said Gizmo eagerly.

"No, I've got it, thanks though" Jinx said firmly. _Why won't he just leave?_

Gizmo looked very disappointed.

"Oh, okay" he said looking mildly pitiful. Jinx's heart melted at the look on his face.

"But maybe we could sit together at breakfast tomorrow?" said Jinx hesitantly.

_Argh! Why did I do that? Stupid! Now he'll never leave me alone. Way to go, Jinx._

Gizmo's face lit up and he grinned.

"Yea! That'd be cool! See ya tomorrow Jinx!"

Gizmo practically skipped away and Jinx resisted the urge to beat her head against the wall.

_I shouldn't have encouraged him…but he was so pitiful! Man, talk about a pain!_

Jinx went into her room with a sigh and started on her schoolwork.

An hour later Jinx was watching the battle from that day, having successfully broken into the mainframe used for hacking practice. She watched herself accidentally Jinx Angel, she watched the girl scream in pain and fall to the ground. Jinx paused the footage and frowned.

She had thought it would be easy to sabotage a simple combat practice, she hadn't realized how dangerous it was. _What if Angel had been seriously hurt? _

Jinx almost screamed in frustration. How was she supposed to make it impossible for them to put her on the same team as people like angel and blaze without sabotaging them?

She punched her pillow.

_I'm twelve! I should be worrying about math homework and whether or not some cute boy has a crush on me. This is so unfair!_

_It may be unfair, _she told herself, _but it's the best option that you've got. _

Jinx groaned.


End file.
